Chapter 121: Oh No! My Chickens!
The plump auntie kept grabbing items until her arms were so full she couldn’t hold anything else. Only then did she hear the rustling of the willow tree, which seemed to be saying, “That’s enough, that’s enough.”
But with her fiery temper, she wasn’t about to give up that easily. She reached out her hand anyway.
Then came a sharp smack! It felt as if the back of her hand had been whipped by a willow switch. It swelled up instantly, turning a bright, angry red.
Jian Xingxia: “!” There’s a monster!
The plump auntie: “!” Mother?!
When she was a little girl and slacked off because she didn’t want to practice chopping radishes, her mother would whip her hands with radish greens!
The auntie quickly pulled her hand back, not daring to take anything else.
Right after that, she noticed that her hand didn’t seem quite as red anymore—it was turning transparent!
Terrified, Jian Xingxia grabbed the auntie and started running toward the exit. “Hurry up, ahhhh!”
Although she still didn’t know what would happen to a temporary laborer if they failed to return on time, just seeing someone turn transparent was frightening enough.
Fortunately, the auntie realized what was happening too and hurriedly bolted while clutching her haul.
When things dropped along the way, Jian Xingxia anxiously trailed behind to pick them up. The auntie couldn’t care less about decorum anymore; she whipped off her outer jacket, bundled everything inside it, and sprinted for her life.
Luckily, between raising chickens and herding oxen at home, the auntie was a woman who could cook a feast or till a field with equal ease. Her physical condition was top-notch.
With a few massive strides, she vanished from sight.
After she left, Jian Xingxia checked the entire path to make sure nothing had been dropped. Only after confirming that everything had been successfully carried back by the auntie did she finally breathe a sigh of relief.
It seemed she would have to remind her temporary laborers to punch out exactly on time in the future.
After all, lagging behind at the end of a shift was a major safety hazard!
Once the auntie departed, Jian Xingxia rushed back to the old house. She immediately gathered the leftovers from lunch and put them away in the refrigerator, leaving three dishes for tomorrow and wrapping the rest tightly in plastic wrap to go straight into the freezer.
The best part was that the auntie had steamed two massive basins of buns. Every single one was enormous and incredibly substantial; eating just one could count as a whole meal.
Jian Xingxia and the others had stuffed themselves at noon, yet combined with Da Hei, they hadn’t even finished ten of them. Of course, that was mostly because there had been too many other dishes at lunch.
But these hearty, large buns solved a massive dilemma for Jian Xingxia. Tomorrow would be the final day of tidying up, and the guesthouse would open the day after that. One of her two recruitment slots would definitely have to go to Lin Sanniang. As for the remaining slot, Jian Xingxia was still torn between summoning A-Feng to handle the front-of-house waiting duties or calling the auntie back to cook.
But now, with two large basins containing forty to fifty buns, even if the guests grew hungry, Jian Xingxia could serve up these generously stuffed, handmade country buns. She wouldn’t be caught unprepared.
While Jian Xingxia was making the final arrangements and preparations in the old house before the opening, the auntie had already been pushed through the cave by the willow branches and nudged back onto the mountain path.
The plump auntie watched as she was squeezed out of the hollow of the giant willow tree inch by inch. When she turned around, the tree hollow that had just managed to conceal her entire body now looked like a perfectly ordinary tree knot. How could it possibly hide a full-grown person?
Moreover, she had been gone for three double-hours. From noon until now, the sun had nearly set, and she was completely alone on the mountain path.
The auntie’s plump heart hammered wildly, practically leaping right out of her throat.
“Mother—!”
Scared out of her wits, she took off at a frantic sprint, running all the way to her daughter’s house.
“Dahong! Dahong!” the auntie banged heavily on the door.
Dahong’s mother-in-law came to open it. “Who is it? In-law? Why have you come at this hour?”
Because Dahong’s mother-in-law had acted completely different before her son’s wedding compared to after, the auntie usually looked down on her quite a bit. But having just bolted out of the pitch-black, desolate wilderness, seeing a familiar face made the auntie let out a loud waah! as she tightly embraced Dahong’s mother-in-law.
Dahong’s mother-in-law was a scrawny, withered little woman who looked to be barely half the auntie’s size.
Being suddenly caught in a head-on embrace by the auntie, she was nearly crushed to faintness.
“In-law! In-law, what is wrong with you! Let go of me, quickly!”
Unable to draw a breath and unable to bear the auntie’s weight, Dahong’s mother-in-law was actually brought down to the ground by the impact, pinned flat on her back.
“What do you think you are doing!” Dahong’s mother-in-law was flushed with shame and fury. She wanted to push the heavy auntie off her, but no matter how she tried, she couldn’t budge her a single inch.
Resentment stirred in her heart. We are both country women, so why does this fat woman possess such terrifying strength? She certainly knows how to slack off during farm work normally!
The auntie patted her chest as she stood up, only then noticing that Dahong’s in-laws were currently eating dinner.
The entire household—the father-in-law, Dahong’s brother-in-law, her husband’s younger brother, his younger sister, along with two sisters-in-law and several nieces and nephews—were all holding their bowls, staring at the auntie in sheer, open-mouthed shock.
None of them could figure out what kind of stunt she was pulling.
Granted, it was only natural for the auntie to visit out of concern since Dahong had just given birth. But who on earth went visiting relatives after the sun had already set?
And she had arrived right at dinner time, to boot. Talk about an awkward coincidence.
“Ahem!” The father-in-law coughed, trying to save face. “In-law, you’ve arrived at the perfect time. Why don’t you sit down and eat a bit with us?”
The auntie was still thoroughly shaken up. Many things were one matter when heard as a story, but experiencing them firsthand was entirely another.
Her lips twitched for a long moment before she finally forced the wild words back down. “Father-in-law, I’ve already eaten. I just came to see Dahong and let her know that we’ve split the family from her grandparents and uncles.”
“What?”
Dahong’s mother-in-law scrambled up from the ground in an instant. “You split the family? You split from your scholar nephew’s household and the second brother who works as a shop manager?”
“Yes, we split just today!” the auntie announced loudly.
Dahong’s mother-in-law eyed the bundle the auntie had tied up using her jacket. Just a moment ago, she had been thinking that at the very least, this in-law knew to bring some items to visit her daughter.
But now, hearing about the family split and considering the ungodly hour of the auntie’s arrival, the mother-in-law’s vision went dark. “Y-You didn’t end up with nowhere to live after the split and bring your luggage to stay at our house, did you?”
After all, when people visited a daughter who had just given birth, they usually brought a laying hen and eggs. Failing that, they would at least carry two blocks of tofu and a fish.
But this bundle of the auntie’s didn’t look like it contained any expensive food or meat at all.
Dahong’s mother-in-law trembled with rage.
The auntie scoffed, “What’s wrong? I can’t stay? Didn’t we agree back then? This is the marital home of my daughter and Liang Er, and it’s up to my daughter and Liang Er to decide. I’ll go ask them right now if I can stay!”
The blood rushed straight to the mother-in-law’s head as she pointed directly at the auntie’s nose. “You, you, you—isn’t this a marriage scam! Why didn’t you mention a family split when we settled the betrothal?!”
With her mind preoccupied with the manor, the auntie didn’t want to waste breath bickering with her. “Our family split, it’s not as if your family split. What are you getting so worked up about?”
Besides—
“When your family settled the betrothal, you also said you would let my daughter and Liang Er move out to live on their own. Yet after the wedding, you didn’t say a single word and treated your own words like flatulence. The one who went back on their word wasn’t me!”
Having suffered the consequences of living with a massive extended family herself, the auntie had put quite a bit of effort into selecting a husband for her daughter back then.
Regrettably, this pack of people who gave birth to sons changed their faces faster than turning the pages of a book. Everything promised before the wedding was treated like flatulence afterward.
The auntie thought to herself: Your family said you would split but didn’t, and our family didn’t say we would split but did. It balances out perfectly, so let’s keep our mouths shut!
With that, she made a move to enter Dahong’s room.
Dahong’s mother-in-law chased after her, wanting to scream and shout, but she was held back by her sons and daughters. “Mother! Stop talking! Our family is the one in the wrong here!”
But the mother-in-law didn’t care. She slapped her thighs and wailed, “Oh, my dear mother! We’ve been conned! We’ve been conned! When we settled the betrothal back then, no one said they were going to split from a future scholar lord! It’s bad enough she can’t bear a son, but now there isn’t even a prominent relative to pull them up. My poor son, how are you going to survive the bitter days ahead…”
While the mother-in-law wailed outside, Dahong and Liang Er felt incredibly awkward inside the room.
The moment the auntie stepped inside, Liang Er stood up. “Mother.”
The auntie jerked her chin toward the outside. “Your mother looks like she’s about to faint. You’d better go outside and check on her.”
Liang Er looked at Dahong, and Dahong nodded. “Go ahead.”
Only after Liang Er stepped out did the auntie lock the bedroom door from the inside.
Dahong looked deeply worried now. “Mother, how did the family end up splitting? How was it divided? Our family only has one room; where will you live after the split? Are you and Father still staying in that woodshed next to the chicken coop?”
The auntie waved her hand dismissively. “It’s gone. The house went to your second uncle, and the fields went to the cousin from your eldest uncle’s family. Your father and I were swept right out the door.”
Dahong was startled. “Then what will you and Father do? Did the grand-uncles in the village not intervene?”
Looking at her daughter who had just given birth and suffered terribly, the auntie couldn’t bear to tease her further. She lowered her voice and said, “They did. The oldest grand-uncle took charge and allocated the chickens and the ox to our household.”
Speaking up to this point, the auntie suddenly slapped her thigh. “Oh no! My chickens!”
